Persistence pays off: Ripon band set to play at popular day-long concert

Thursday

May 29, 2014 at 12:01 AM

This definitely is a really big deal for the guys in French Cassettes.

Tony Sauro

This definitely is a really big deal for the guys in French Cassettes.

Six years ago, the four musicians from Ripon couldn't get anything but ignored when they moved to San Francisco.

"It's definitely hard to break in here," said Mackenzie Bunch, who plays guitar and keyboards in the group formed at Ripon High School. "When you're booking shows as a band just starting, you can't even get a call back."

That's changed dramatically.

The French Cassettes, who once described their inventive pop-rock music as a "jumble of chaotic instrumentation," now are one of 10 groups playing on the Soundcheck Local Band Stage during Sunday's day-long LIVE-105 - known as BFD during its 20-year history - concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View.

They play for 40 minutes, emphasizing songs from "Gold Youth," their first full-length recording. It was released in August.

Sunday's headliners include Foster the People, M.I.A., Fitz & the Tantrums, Phantogram and New Politics. Thirty-six bands and DJs perform on four stages.

That includes being heard on "Soundcheck" a Sunday radio show on LIVE-105 hosted by Aaron Axelson - he'll be doing his DJ thing Sunday - and their steady gigs at Oakland's relatively new Awaken Cafe. The Cassettes are playing there three times in June.

"That just made our name more known on the scene a little bit," Bunch said.

The group of Ripon High grads - there once were six members - has been hanging in there since 2008.

"It was really tough," said Bunch, 24, who works at a silk-screen printing business in San Francisco's Mission District. "You're playing every show you can at the beginning. No matter how small. Initially, you're doing it all yourself."

They played a big, "really cool" show last Friday at San Francisco's Bottom of the Hill club, where they "re-released" "Gold Youth," which initially was introduced last year at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall. They're also releasing the album on cassette tape.

Bunch and Scott formed the band and made their musical introduction at Ripon High as the Lite Brites, named for a children's toy that Scott Huerta "loved."

Some of the band's earliest shows were staged at Stockton's former Plea for Peace Center.

From the beginning, they've been musical explorers. After high school, though, they realized the Bay Area likely was the only place they could be "discovered." They began with a two-song EP ("Seahorse") in 2009.

They've continued to work at day jobs, but several members couldn't sustain the intense musical commitment. Huerta (San Francisco State) and Bunch (City College of San Francisco) pursued their educations, simultaneously generating musical visibility in the competitive Bay Area.

"Our music has been evolving," said Bunch, whose band mates are influenced by a range of styles, from the Doors' "Light My Fire" to be-bop jazz, the Strokes and Mars Volta. "I see a lot of live music. I'm always going out to watch bands. I get inspired by different kinds of music. You find a lot of high-quality local bands.

"Some of them are amazing. They put out some great, fabulous stuff. We feed off each other."

That's helped nurture the Cassettes' musical growth.

"It's gonna be a little different," he said of the second album that's now in the "writing process. It's hard to pinpont all the influences."

Bunch enjoys "swing standards" from the 1940s and '50s. Gallagher's into be-bop jazz. The Huertas "keep us hip with all the contemporary stuff," Bunch said.

The group's name always has added a tone of hipness.

"Well," Scott Huerta, told the Record in 2010. "I've sort of somehow always been a fan of France and the French language, though none of us knows how to speak it. So, it's one familiar note indicating we want to develop and learn.

"Also, we have our favorite cassettes that were our parents' favorites, too. Oh, like that Doors one ('The Doors,' 1967) with 'Light My Fire' on it."

Bunch first saw the BFD light when the Strokes - "my favorite band" - headlined the Shoreline show he attended as a sophomore at Ripon High.

"Actually, it's been a full circle," Bunch said. "I loved it. It was awesome. It was before we even were playing shows. It wasn't even part of my dreams."

Contact Tony Sauro at (209) 546-8267 or tsauro@recordnet.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsaurorecord.

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